One of the areas of medical device systems that has undergone great progress in the past decade is that of transmission of data. For example, implantable medical devices, such as cardiac pacemakers, incorporate the capacity to download data that has been sensed from patient cardiac signals through telemetry. Pacemaker and other implantable cardiac device systems have the capacity to collect and store a significant amount of data that is useful for control, and particularly for diagnostic purposes. This data is downloaded by telemetry to an external programmer, of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,843,138. As shown in the system of the aforementioned patent, such programmers also have the capability of transmitting control commands and new software routines for use by the pacemaker or other implanted device. Such programmers are in widespread use, but generally are quite sophisticated and are available for use only by a physician. As a consequence, they are usually only available in a medical facility.
In more recent years, emphasis has been placed on providing improved tele-monitoring of cardiac and other medical data, by connecting the pacemaker system or any other medical device that collects patient data, including the external programmer, with a more expanded communication system. Thus, it is known to acquire cardiac signals through transmission of signals by analog telemetry to a programmer type device, and then to subsequently convert the signals into data that can be connected through to the Internet. See Hutten et al, IEEE/EMBS, Oct. 30–Nov. 2, 1997, pages 974–976, disclosing a web browser based remote patient heart transplant monitoring system. However, such systems, and other currently proposed systems rely on a sophisticated interface device of a type not normally available to a patient, and in particular not when the patient is travelling. A further problem that limits easy transmission of patient data to the Internet is the need to record the data to a medium such as a floppy disc or CD, so that it is easily inputted into a computer. While such sophisticated equipment is available in a hospital or medical facility setting, it would rarely be available to a patient. This becomes even more so if the patient is traveling and away from the home environment. In such situations, access to a computer would be of little help if there were no easy means of getting medical data into the computer for subsequent passage across the Internet to a web site where it can be analyzed.
There is a great deal of work and investment presently being directed toward enhanced communication of medical and like data across the Internet for subsequent analysis. However, there remains a serious need for a system and method of enabling a patient, with minimum expense, to easily acquire medical data of various forms and transform it for input into a personal computer, so that the data can be transmitted to a dedicated web site wherever the patient can have access to a personal computer. Since personal computers are now widely available, the key is to provide a simple and relatively inexpensive manner of connecting the patient to the computer without the need of having a sophisticated programmer or equivalent interface device.